Dungeon Fantasy: The Living Darkness
 

There was an ancient black zigurat in the Devil's Forest. Many a traveler would ponder it's meaning as they passed by it as they rode along the trade route. There were many legends about it. It was once said to be an abandoned temple of an evil god, other scholars said it was an artifact of the Dark Times. Even others said it was from a race that existed before man. Nobody knew for sure.

One day, orcs were spotted near the black zigurat. The king of the land sent a patrol to dispatch the orcs. Only one member of the patrol returned saying that there were many other humanoids there as well. He said there were trolls, goblins, bugbears and hobgoblins. Before the king could raise an army, hoards of humanoids were coming into the kingdom and kidnapping the peasants. The peasants took shelter in the walled city. Behind the gates they felt safe, yet there were sighting of humanoids stalking the area looking for any people who were left in the villages.

There was a very strange and lucky coincidence. During a patrol, a great wizard named Yondor, felt an immensely strong magical presence. He told to the patrol to follow him. It lead to a family riding in a wagon on the trade route. Yondor felt the stregnth of a magical presence he had never felt before. It was overpowering. Yondor cast True Sight and it unveiled the traveling family as three shadow elves. In the wagon the was a huge black stone of intense magic. Yondor ordered the patrol to stop the elves. The elves knew their trick was uncovered so they pretended not to hear and kept on going. The patrol stopped the wagon and the elves fled on foot disappearing with invisability. The patrol was unable to find the shadow elves so Yondor decided to investigate the contents of the wagon. There was large metal trunk that was magically locked. Yondor cast a spell and it was opened. Inside was a strange black stone, it looked as if it were some sort of meteor. It radiated the strongest magc he had ever felt. As he looked at it, Yondor felt the urge to touch it. He could not resist. He put his hand upon it and then felt an energy flow through him, then he collapsed.

The patrol was quite worried. They decideded to try to cart the stone back and carry Yondor's body on horseback. As they headed back toward the kingdom, arrows began to hit the side of the wagon and patrol. The guards riding in the wagon were slain and the other members of the patrol were slain as well. It was the shadow elves. They had a large force now which quickly over ran the patrol. The guardsman carrying Yondor decided to flee as there was no way to overtake the shadow elves now.

Only four patrolmen and Yondor survived. They returned to te king and told them of the events. The king quickly sent message to other rulers as to what was happening. Yondor consulted the king's scholar, Theonias, to try to come up with an idea of what was happening. The scholar researched in the king's extensive library and found some information about the ancient black zigurat, he found no information about the stone however. It seemed that the black zigurats were said to have been built by a race eons older than man. It was said that these beings who created the temple were once called the Ptar, in an ancient language meaning "the terrible claw." Legends said that these beings were defeated by men in the Great Wars during which the Faery helped mankind.

Theonias told the king to send spies to the black zigurat. The king agreed. The five best spies in the kingdom were sent.

The spies wore rings of invisabilty and they came upon the zigurat. There were no doors observed on the side of the zigurat and the zigurat was sunken deep into the earth as it had been slowly buried by time. The spies search everywhere but found nothing. They decided to camp out nearby and to their luck, they heard some noises so they followed them. The noises came from a nearby cave. The spies went toward the cave and saw that it was gurded by three large trolls. The spies tried to sneak into the cave but one of the trolls said, "I smell humans" and the other trolls began to search about. The spies were quick and the began to scale the walls as the trolls swung wildly along the ground. The trolls gave up after a while and the spies quietly went further into the cave. The cave was long and filthy from the trolls, orcs and other humanoids. At last the came upon a sculpted doorway which was made of black stone. The spies encountered many other guards and were never found. They came upon a sort of library and wizards study. On the table was a strange book that was open. It was written in a language that he had never seen before. One spy took this book and told to the other spies that he would return to the king with it. The other spies agreed and they decided to spy on other places.

The returning spy named Malon, quickly brought back the strange book to the king. The king gave the book to the scholar and the scholar began to decipher te strange language. It took a long time but he was able to understand that this book was a book about the history of the Ptar and how they aquired their great magic. The book said that the great lord Hsskkitsa was greeted one night during his dreams by a being of living darkness. The being instructed him to write down what he was told during the dreams as soon as he awoke. After a while the great lord became one of the greatest wizards of history. He trained many others in his path and soon developed a religion worshipping "the Living Darkness." Many eons later the being commanded the Ptar to release him from his prison. He told the Ptar that he would give them even greater powers if he were to be released. So many of the Ptar tried to free the Living Darkness. The Ptar gathered all of the magical power they could to free the Living Darkness. Deep within the Earth, there were said to have been strange stones that contained the energy of creation. These stones were said to have fallen from the sky. The Ptar gathered them and began to build a gate to allow the Living Darkness into the world to allow it to be free.

One night, the leader of the Ptar had terrible dreams about death and destruction. He awoke and broke into a temple where the strange black stones were kept and stole them. Nobody knew where he went but all of the stones disappeared. After this started the decline of the Ptar. Their magic ceased to be as powerful and other races grew greater in number, their reign was over. With the stones gone, the Living Darkness demanded the lives of other races. The Ptar would feed their victims to the god and his children to honor him.

The other part of the book contained spells of some sort. These were said to be some of the writings of the leader Hsskkitsa. Theonias, after reading this part of the book began to have terrible nightmares so he stopped reading the book. He knew if he read much more he would become insane.

The other spies at the zigurat skulked about trying to uncover more information. They found that there were shadow elves here as well as dark dwarves. The spies were able to intercept a message from a newly arived shadow elf. Another spy returned to the king and gave the message. The scholar researched the language and found it to be in shadow elf. The message said that "the fifth stone had been found by dark dwarves and would arrive soon. Destruction would soon be complete."

The other spies explored further and found a large temple in the center of the zigurat. In this temple were five demonic statues aranged in a circle each holding their hands out. Four of them were holding strange black stones that seemed to almost cast a violet glow. In the middle of the statues was a pentagram made of platinum that was inlaid in the black stone of the floor. There were many shadow elves and dark dwarves in robes worshipping here. They seemed to have an almost crazed look in their eyes. Their prayers were wild and fanatic.

During the prayers the pentagram would have a silvery glow. Strange tenticled things danced in the pentagram. Some were like worms floating through the air. As the prayer grew wilder the beings in the pentagram slammed against what seemed to be an invisable barrior. Finally one creature managed to get through. It had a long wormlike body covered with tenticles and there were strange eyes looking in all directions. It writhed on the floor and its tenticles undulated. The eyes that looked in all directions soon began to focus on the spies. The beast began to move towards them. One of the spies screamed in terror alerting the shadow elves and dark dwarves. The spies were surrounded and then were killed and fed to the creature.

To be continued: